The Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PoC) Standard of the Open Mobile Alliance™ supports a push-to-talk communication between participating cellular telephones supporting the PoC standard. As is well-known, the Push-to-Talk standard allows a walkie-talkie type half-duplex communication to be carried out between registered users.
Typically, a transmitting telephone device has an address book containing telephone numbers of contacts with whom a session may be established. An initiator selects a recipient from the address book and a push-button is depressed, whereupon a half-duplex communication session can be established with the selected recipient. The recipient is alerted, typically by a characteristic tone informing him the incoming call is a Push-to-Talk call. The recipient may depress an accept-call button, whereby (s)he will be able to hear the initiator, but without the ability to reply until the initiator ceases speaking and lifts his finger from the push-button.
If the recipient is equipped with a PoC-compatible device, (s)he may at this stage depress a similar push-button on her/his device so as to establish a walkie-talkie type communication with the initiator. If the recipient is not equipped with a PoC-compatible device, then no service can be provided and in such a case a tone indicating failure will be heard on the initiator device. Further, the user necessarily must press a button to talk, which can be intrusive on several levels, such as the need to reach for the phone, wherever it should be, and the need to constantly physically depress a button when desiring to communicate in a walkie-talkie and/or hand-held two-way radio conversation.
Mobile telephones having integral cameras are becoming popular. These telephones allow still video images to be captured and communicated to remote users, both over the cellular network and, of course, over the Internet. However, walkie-talkies as they are currently known do not support cameras and/or video.
Wearable electronic device technology is intended to be used frequently while a user is active (e.g., walking, driving, sports, sleeping, skiing, etc.). Conventional wearable electronic device user interfaces (e.g., a mouse, touch interfaces, voice commands, etc.) may be difficult and/or impractical (e.g., double tapping a touch interface on a head-worn device while running, or talking while out-of-breath in a windy environment, etc.) when a user is performing tasks limiting their ability to use the electronic device. In this context conventional user interfaces can be ungainly and make the wearable electronic device useless or have diminished capacity during specific movement events.
Wireless earpieces are a new class of consumer electronic devices with excellent growth potential. Wireless earpieces have focused on personal entertainment and communications. For example, wireless earpieces may be utilized with a cellular phone to make phone calls. Thus far, wireless devices have not efficiently facilitated communications between multiple potential users in a two-way radio capacity.